Blue Streak
Blue Streak's history is explained briefly in Prospero One. For a more detailed background, see the transcript of the Border Television documentary on the Blue Streak project, and Nicholas Hill's excellent UK Space site.

Roly Gough
A nod to two famous British test pilots of the 1950s and 60s: Roly Falk and Roly Beaumont. The character of Gough is not based on either of them, though.

Stevenage
The British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) plant at Stevenage, Hertfordshire, was the manufacturing site for Blue Streak. In real life it became the British Aerospace Space Systems Division and later part of Matra Marconi Space. It seems reasonable that in the timeline of Prospero One it would have been the nucleus of British space vehicle development.

James Burke
TV science journalist and populariser, perhaps best known today for his Connections documentary on the history of technology. During the Apollo era and afterwards he was one of British TV's leading space commentators.

Patrick Moore
Well-known British TV astronomer who has been presenting The Sky At Night since the late 1950s, and who acted as a space commentator during Apollo.

Arthur C Clarke
World-famous science fiction writer, born in the UK but resident in Sri Lanka for many years. During the 1930s and 40s, Clarke was active in the newly-formed British Interplanetary Society, an early focal point for British space enthusiasts.

Joe Muldoon
Prospero One is set in the same timeline as Voyage, Stephen Baxter's alternate-history novel in which NASA flies a manned mission to Mars rather than building the Space Shuttle. Muldoon is a ficticious character who, in Voyage, flew as Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 11, a position occupied by Buzz Aldrin in real life.

Black Prince III
British military and space projects of the 1950s and 60s tended to be given names based on a loose colour code. A 'Blue' prefix usually indicated a strategic missile system (e.g. Blue Streak, or the Blue Steel standoff missile) whilst 'Black' was applied to launch vehicles that were not themselves weapon systems, even if they were derived from them or used for military purposes. Examples include Black Knight, used for re-entry vehicle tests, and Black Arrow, a short-lived but successful small satellite launcher that was, in real life, the actual last gasp of an independent British space programme. Black Prince was indeed the name given to conceptual studies of a British launcher based on a Blue Streak with an upper stage derived from Black Knight.

kerosene-and-peroxide
British rocketry - almost uniquely - had a long flirtation with the propellant combination of kerosene and hydrogen peroxide. It was used on both Black Knight and Black Arrow, as well as Blue Steel. As a propellant combination, it had the advantage of being non-cryogenic (i.e. both propellants were liquid at room temperature), dense (so allowing compact, light tankage) and hypergolic (igniting on contact with each other). However, hydrogen peroxide suffered from a bad reputation as a hazardous material to handle, and the performance available was slightly lower than for more popular propellant combinations such as kerosene and liquid oxygen. Blue Streak itself used the latter propellants, as these were what were used by the US engines on which the RZ-2 was based. As noted in the text, this reliance on cryogenic (and thus non-storable) propellants was, in real life, Blue Streak's downfall.

TSR-2
TSR-2 was a British project for an advanced supersonic strike aircraft comparable to the contemporary US F-111. By 1964 a prototype was flying, but the whole programme had been a target of the opposition Labour party on cost grounds. When Labour won the 1964 election, the TSR-2 project was cancelled in the most final way possible. All airframes under construction were destroyed, as were the production tooling and blueprints, in an effort to ensure that it would be impossible to reactive the project. Two airframes survived, and can now be seen at the museums at Duxford and RAF Cosford. The story of TSR-2 is, in the view of many British aviation enthusiasts, one of the most shameful episodes in British aviation history. It has been extensively documented, notably in books such as Derek Wood's Project Cancelled; see also Damien Burke's TSR-2 page.

53-degree orbit
A launch from Woomera to a 53-degree inclination orbit might have been rather marginal on launch direction constraints. From Woomera, the main safe launch axis was due north, over the Gulf of Carpentaria. A flight into any other than polar orbit would have required overflight of Queensland during the boost phase. We have exercised some artistic licence and assumed that a safe trajectory would have been arrived at in order to achieve an acceptable orbital path.

Gamma 304s
A hypothetical advanced model of Hawker-Siddely's kerosene/peroxide 'Gamma' rocket motor. The Gamma was used in differing variants on both Black Knight and Black Arrow.

Raymond Baxter
Former RAF pilot turned TV presenter, well-known during the early 1970s as presenter of the BBC Tomorrow's World science programme.

Anthony Wedgewood Benn
Better known as Tony Benn, famous Labour Party politician who held various political offices during the 1960s and 70s before his hard-left attitude distanced him from the mainstream of Labour. An opponent of the British space programme, he was instrumental in the cancellation of what remained of it in real life. We felt it was not unfair to suggest that his views would have been similar in the timeline of Prospero One.

Spadeadam
The test facility built in the forests of Cumbria to support the British rocket development programme. In real life, static test firings were conducted there, but no actual launches. The Blue Streak test pads still exist, although today Spadeadam is an RAF training range.

David Frost
Prominent British TV anchor and interviewer.

Skylab A / Moonlab
Another Voyage reference. In the timeline of Voyage, NASA reverts to the Saturn IB launched 'Wet Workshop' version of Skylab, and also uses a Saturn V to launch a similar 'Wet Workshop' into orbit around the Moon. Because of the need to gain experience in long-duration manned spaceflight in advance of the Mars mission, the Skylab programme is more extensive and prolonged than it was in real life.

the Met Office at Bracknell
The Meteorological Office is the British national weather and climate research agency. Its headquarters are at Bracknell, west of London.

Minus Y Array / Plus Y Array
In space, terms like 'top', 'bottom', 'left' or 'port' are at best ambiguous and often meaningless. Instead, convention is that an X/Y/Z coordinate axis system is used. For a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, +X is 'ahead' in the direction of orbital motion, +Z is 'down' towards Earth and +Y is 'right'. For Prospero One, if you were above and behind it as it orbited the Earth, the -Y array would have been to the left, and the +Y array to the right.

Contingency OPA3C
It is standard practice in space operations, for everything from small unmanned satellites to major manned missions, to have preplanned flight procedures for both scheduled operations and problems or failures. Spacecraft engineers spend a great deal of time trying to imagine every possible way in which their creations could go wrong, and either making them resistant to such faults or developing contingency procedures to cope with their consequences.

Mitch Clapp
Mitchell Burnside Clapp - American/Australian rocket scientist, test pilot, science-fiction fan, singer and president of Pioneer Rocketplane - seems to have crept into this story somehow...

Lightning
Classic British jet fighter of the 1960s, manufactured by English Electric (later part of BAC). Famous for going very fast in a straight line until its fuel ran out - which rarely took long.

Blue Streaks with French and German upper stages
In real life, this is what actually happened. Blue Streak flew in 1964, but as part of the 'Europa' project run by the European Launcher Development Organisation (precursor to the European Space Agency). From the fifth flight onwards, Blue Streak carried a French second stage and a German third stage, forming the Europa I launch vehicle. Unfortunately, in that and six subsequent missions, it never proved possible to make all elements properly work together - although the Blue Streak first stage performed successfully on every flight. Europa was finally cancelled in 1971, and was suceeded by the Ariane project.

Former President Kennedy
The 'historical branch point' of Voyage was Kennedy's survival of the assassination attempt in Dallas, and his subsequent influence on the direction of the US Space Programme. We decided to let him affect the British one as well.

A blueprint bonfire in the middle of the car park
As noted earlier, this actually happened when TSR-2 was cancelled in 1964.

Pyro guillotine
It is common on spacecraft for moving or deployable parts to be locked in place during the vibration of launch. Once in orbit, pyrotechnic devices such as small explosive bolts or cutters are used to sever the restraints. These are usually (but not invariably) reliable.

Waxwing
Solid-propellant boost motor. In real life, it was used as the third stage of the Black Arrow launcher. It would have been about the right size to act as the retro-rocket for the Prospero One stack.

A cold grey light glared into the cabin
Some people who read the story seemed to think that this meant that the capsule and Lighthill burnt up on re-entry. This wan't meant to be the case; it was just a description of the rapid onset of the ionisation phase of entry into the atmosphere.

Copyright © 1999 S Bradshaw & S Baxter
Most recent revision August 23rd, 1999